Germany’s industrial production has slipped to ZERO per cent and customer confidence has plummeted in just part of a catalogue of disasters for Chancellor Angela Merkel.  A fall in Germany's prosperity could drag the eurozone down with it - a scenario becoming more likely amid growing signs of the country's slowdown.  The country has the biggest economy in Europe and is where a large portion of the bloc's wealth is created.   Germany's money has helped the eurozone struggle ahead, despite the ailing finances of Italy, Spain and Greece.  If the German economy crumbles it could start a domino effect that would pull down other countries' economies with it.  That would also be a huge hit to Britain as Europe is one of the UK's biggest trading partners.  The biggest shock facing Germany is the slowing global economy, which spells disaster for its export-driven growth. China is one of Germany's biggest markets, and its falling demand is expected to hit home hard. France is one of Germany's closest trading partners and its economy is struggling, further dampening demand for German exports. Expert Peter Lundgreen, head of investment firm Lundgreen's capital said: "German exporters are feeling the pain from the slowdown in business investments in many emerging market countries, as commodity prices have tumbled."  Germany's industrial output has helped underpin the country's economic growth - but these numbers have been undershooting expert expectations for months.  Domestic consumption has also powered the country's growth over the past year but consumer confidence has been falling since June last year, which indicates that consumption is set to fall too, Mr Lundgreen added.

Concerns that the global recovery could be derailed began last summer when a devaluation of the Chinese currency sparked a meltdown on the Shanghai stock exchange. A series of economic downgrades to the Chinese and US economies since then, coupled with a rise in US interest rates, have fuelled investors’ misgivings about optimistic forecasts for a recovery in economic fortunes.

Adding to the concerns of a sharp downgrade in global growth this year, a survey for the consultants PwC before the Davos meeting revealed that two-thirds of chief executives saw more threats facing their businesses than three years ago. And the head of the Swiss banking giant UBS, Axel Weber, turned the screw by warning that the world was stuck in an era of low growth.  Last week, an investment analyst at Royal Bank of Scotland advised clients to “sell everything” except the safest high grade bonds after warning of a “cataclysmic” year and the strong likelihood of a stock market crash. His comments came after the chancellor, George Osborne, warned in a new year speech of a “cocktail of threats” to the UK’s prospects from an increasingly uncertain world economy.

 

 

The economic system worldwide is a total shambles thanks to central bankers and governments who think they can print away their problems and 2008 never happened. Now the under the counter QE will be joined by QE4 and then its off to hyperinflation as all the bankrupt banks and companies who pay their workers peanuts have to be saved because they cannot survive in the world they created. A total and utter shambles...I'm never sure why there is so much concern about liquidity or lack of it in fixed income or equity markets. If investors want to sell something that they own, they can only sell it at the price that another investor is prepared to pay for it. If that price is lower than the price someone else was prepared to pay a month ago, or a week ago, or if the price is less than the seller was hoping to achieve, so be it. It's not the end of the world. They can decide not to sell at the lower price and hold on to their asset, or they can bite the bullet and sell.  Bonds and shares are designed to be long term investments. There is no fundamental right for an investor to redeem that investment whenever it suits him. If he wants out of the investment, he has to sell it and he can only sell it to someone else who wants to buy it - at a price that person wants to buy it at.  Why are so many people getting worked up about this?...The EU has legislated a mechanism to prevent a bank crash, it is based on the Cyprus model and amounts to using your money as the bank's assets.  "You see, when you open an account with a bank, you are investing in that bank". As someone who has owned bank shares and bank bonds, that is news to me, but, the rules are there to be changed at will by the people with the power to do so, and they have. The statement above indicates that your money is just as likely to be misappropriated sitting in a bank as it is if it were under your mattress.  It might be prudent to move your money into a Mutual or if a small amount, take it out and stick it under the garden shed or something.

Preşedintele ceh Milos Zeman, cunoscut pentru poziţiile sale anti-imigranţi, a declarat că integrarea musulmanilor în societate în Europa este 'practic imposibilă', relatează France Presse.   "Experienţa unor ţări din Europa Occidentală unde există ghetouri şi sate excluse arată că integrarea comunităţii musulmane este practic imposibilă", a declarat preşedintele Zeman într-o înregistrare video publicată duminică pe site-ul cotidianului de mare tiraj Blesk.  "Să-i lăsăm să îşi trăiască propria cultură în ţările lor şi să nu îi ducem în Europa, altfel se va termina ca la Koln", a adăugat el, făcând referire la violenţele împotriva unor femei în noaptea de Anul Nou în acest oraş din centrul Germaniei.  "Integrarea este posibilă în cazul unor culturi similare, iar similitudinile pot varia", a adăugat el, subliniind că unele comunităţi ne-musulmane, precum cea ucraineană sau cea vietnameză, s-au putut integra în societatea cehă.  În vârstă de 71 de ani, Zeman, preşedinte de stânga, primul şef de stat ales prin sufragiu universal în Cehia, şi-a exprimat în mai multe rânduri opoziţia faţă de primirea de imigranţi în Europa.  Potrivit preşedintelui ceh, confreria Frăţia Musulmană din Egipt se află în spatele actualului val de imigranţi care folosesc mijloace financiare "venite dintr-un anumit număr de state", pentru "a prelua progresiv controlul asupra Europei".  La sfârşitul lunii decembrie, în mesajul său de Crăciun, preşedintele ceh a calificat drept 'invazie organizată' actualul val migrator, invitându-i pe tinerii imigranţi din Siria şi Irak "să pună mai degrabă mâna pe arme" pentru a lupta împotriva grupării jihadiste Statul Islamic (SI).  Conform cifrelor ONU, peste un milion de imigranţi au ajuns în Europa în 2015, fugind de conflicte armate din Afganistan, Irak şi Siria.

GERMANY - Timmermans these days is having to exercise his utmost diplomatic skill in order to avoid an escalation of tensions. When, during a visit to Amsterdam on Thursday, Timmermans was asked about the Polish foreign minister's jibe, he could have struck back. But there is already enough tension, so he chose to take a different tack, instead praising the transformation of Eastern European countries from socialist dictatorships to free societies. But, he added, true democracies include two important elements: the protection of human rights and adherence to the rule of law. The fact that Timmermans had to utter something that obvious says a lot about the current state of the European Union -- and developments in Poland. In less than two months, the country's new nationalist-conservative government has succeeded in disempowering the constitutional court, passing a law establishing government control over public broadcasting and installing party-aligned political appointees at the head of its intelligence services. "We want to cure our country of a few illnesses," Foreign Minister Waszcykowski told Germany's tabloid Bild earlier this month.

Independent researchers reported detecting elevated methane levels as far as 8 miles from the massive, ongoing leak of natural gas from a storage site in northwestern Los Angeles. A ruptured well at Southern California Gas Co.'s Aliso Canyon underground facility has spewed more than 80,000 metric tons of methane into the atmosphere since the leak was discovered Oct. 23. The release of the powerful greenhouse gas led to the evacuation of thousands of people from the affluent Porter Ranch neighborhood a mile from the leak after reports by residents of nosebleeds, rashes, headaches and nausea.Finding elevated methane levels well beyond the Porter Ranch area raises potential health concerns for people living outside the immediate vicinity of the leak, the researchers said. Inhaling low concentrations of methane, the primary component of natural gas, is generally not considered a health concern, but natural gas often contains trace amounts of other, more harmful gases.  "Whatever else may be in the gas-benzene, toluene, xylene -- that is what people may be breathing," said Nathan Phillips, an earth and environment professor at Boston University. "Even though we're not measuring things other than methane, there is a legitimate concern that there is that other nasty stuff in there."  The findings challenge assurances from the South Coast Air Quality Management District, the regional air pollution control agency, and the state's Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment that the leak hasn't increased residents' exposure to toxic gases.  The cumulative methane emissions from the Aliso Canyon facility to date have the greenhouse gas equivalent on the Earth's atmosphere of burning nearly 800 million gallons of gasoline, according to the Environmental Defense Fund.  On Wednesday, Los Angeles City Councilman Mitchell Englander called on SoCal Gas to extend its residential relocation program to residents of neighborhoods adjacent to Porter Ranch, according to the Los Angeles Daily News. People in these communities were also reporting similar symptoms related to the leaking gas, according to the paper. SoCal Gas spokeswoman Kristine Lloyd said the gas company is providing temporary accommodation and air filtration for residents within a five-mile radius of the leak, extending beyond Porter Ranch.  Democratic US Senators Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein of California sent a letter to the Department of Transportation, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Justice Wednesday calling on the federal agencies to offer further assistance to the State of California in responding to the gas leak.  In a mapping effort funded by the Home Energy Efficiency Team, a Cambridge, Mass., nonprofit, Phillips and Robert Ackley of Gas Safety Inc. measured methane emissions for the past several days near the Aliso Canyon leak. Gas Safety Inc. provides natural gas leak detection services to industry, businesses and homeowners.  They used a laser-based system mounted to a car. It recorded methane concentrations and plotted the readings on Google Earth. On Tuesday and Wednesday the researchers drove further from the leak and recorded methane concentrations as much as two times higher than background levels, as far as 8 miles away from the site.

The International Accounting Standards Board^® (the Board) today issued a new accounting Standard, called IFRS 16 Leases. It replaces accounting requirements introduced more than 30 years ago that are no longer considered fit for purpose and is a major revision of the way in which companies account for leases. Leasing provides an important and flexible source of financing for many companies. However, the old lease accounting Standard (IAS 17 Leases) makes it difficult for investors and others to get an accurate picture of a company’s lease assets and liabilities, particularly for industries such as the airline, retail and transport sectors.  Listed companies using IFRS Standards or US GAAP are estimated to have around US$3.3 trillion of lease commitments; over 85 per cent of which do not appear on their balance sheets*. That is because leases to date have been categorized as either ‘finance leases’ (which are reported on the balance sheet) or ‘operating leases’ (which are disclosed only in the notes to the financial statements).  This somewhat arbitrary distinction made it difficult for investors to compare companies. It also meant that investors and others had to estimate the effects of a company’s off balance sheet lease obligations, which in practice often led to overestimating the liabilities arising from those obligations. IFRS 16 solves this problem by requiring all leases to be reported on a company’s balance sheet as assets and liabilities.  Accompanying the Standard, the IASB has also published a separate Effects Analysis, which outlines the costs and benefits of the Standard. It clearly demonstrates the need for the Standard and that the benefits outweigh the costs.  The Board has given careful consideration to feedback received and has introduced several cost-saving measures for preparers, such as exempting ‘small ticket’ items as well as leases of 12 months or less. The publication of a separate Effects Analysis follows on from a report to the IFRS Foundation Trustees in November 2014 by the Effects Analysis Consultative Group. The Effects Analysis can be accessed here. A separate Project Summary, including an overview of the project history and how the Board has responded to stakeholders’ comments during the development of the Standard, can be found here. *Based on a sample of 30,000 listed companies using IFRS or US GAAP, over 14,000 companies disclose information about off balance sheet leases in their 2014 annual reports. The future payments for off balance sheet leases for those companies totalled US$2.9 trillion (on an undiscounted basis).